The Miracle Behind the Spark

A Rosh Hashanah brownout left me without coffee—and my Rabbi caught me halfway through the Shul’s (synagogue) kitchen window. What began as a desperate search for hot water opened my eyes to a miracle hidden behind every light switch. We thank Hashem when the power comes back on—but what keeps it flowing in the first place?

There was a brownout on Rosh Hashanah. It occurred at around 4:30 AM on the first day.

Our coffee machine went cold. We were in a fit. We understood a friend who confided that he could fast on Yom Kippur, but going without coffee made it hard.

That’s when I went to our local Shul. The Rabbi knows his people. He makes sure that there is always a full pot of coffee and fresh pastries waiting for the morning minyan. I figured I could walk in, fill a few cups with hot water, then come home and make coffee.

I get there and crisis: The Shul is locked.

Desperate, I find the kitchen window. The window is open, so I start to climb through. Right when I am halfway into the room, in comes the Rabbi – seeing one of his own breaking into the kitchen.

He smiles and waves.

I get down. Ten seconds later, the door to the Shul opens, and the Rabbi greets me with a smile.

“Your coffee machine broke, right?”

My Rabbi is a pioneer. He has lived here for 50 years, when Afula was a very small farming village. He knows about brownouts and disabled Yom Tov timers.

“Rabbi, are you okay? Are your timers working?”

He smiles. “Yes. The brownout threw them off by an hour. Everything works, but an hour later.”

He keeps his composure as he takes 50 Machzorim (holiday prayerbooks) and moves them to another table. The brownout affected the air conditioner, which is now dripping condensation on the top three prayer books.

“Can I help?”

“David,” says the Rav calmly, with a tinge of urgency in his voice.

“Bring your wife her coffee.”

That’s my Rabbi.

Hashem’s Gift to Humanity

We assume we can start the day with warm coffee. We assume we can mix in some cold milk. We know that the lights will stay on well into the night, and the air conditioner will start its battle against a sweaty brow before many of us get up.

In a split second, these assumptions can be called into question. All it took was a simple brownout to remind us.

Baruch Hashem, the brownout didn’t break the timers, they only delayed them. Had the outage disabled the timers, all coffee pots in Afula wouldn’t work. Nobody would have air conditioning. Ovens and heating plates would not work, so for the next 36 hours, Rosh Hashanah would be spent in sweltering heat and cold meals.

Miraculously, this Rosh Hashanah, Hashem let us know for a brief moment what life would be like without His miracle of electricity.

Behind this gift is an even greater miracle.

Hashem’s Constant Kindness

While man’s mechanics enable electricity, and sometimes disable it, it is Hashem’s creation of the world that allows us to use it.

Even more: It is the constant law of electromagnetic induction that is Hashem’s greater kindness.

In 1831, scientist Michael Faraday discovered that moving a magnet through a coil of wire can create an electric current. Today, the world generates over thirty thousand trillion watt-hours of electricity based on this principle that has remained steady for two hundred years.¹

In our siddur, our Sages say: He provides illumination for the earth and for those who dwell upon it, with compassion, and in His goodness He renews daily, perpetually, the work of creation.²

This is the greater miracle: We can create plants to generate electricity, and tools for survival like a refrigerator, oven, and air conditioner because Hashem maintains the laws of generating electricity in a constant, perpetual, and predictable manner.

The ancient Egyptians studied electricity. So did the ancient Greeks. In fact, the word electricity comes from the ancient Greeks.

Hashem created an electron of a certain size, tens of trillions narrower than a single human hair. He creates it with an electrical charge. He creates it in such a way that when the electron goes from one atom to the next, the electrical charge is passed on.

It’s a miracle that in the seven days of creation, HaKadosh Baruch Hu created these! What brings us to awe is how from the moment Adam HaRishon opened his eyes to the last time you checked your email . . . these laws, or shall I say, His constant kindness, have never changed.

If, at any time, God were to decide that magnets have no effect on electrons, or that copper prevents electricity from moving instead of enabling it, or that electrons will be of varying sizes – instead of the 1 followed by 51 zeros number of electrons – all being the same size – the lights would go out everywhere.

Any disruption in the power of your home is a small taste of what would happen if Hashem suddenly decided to withhold His gift of electricity. Anytime we are denied any comfort of the modern world presents the ultimate opportunity to thank Hashem for hot water, cold juice, and lightbulbs.

If we made an accounting of the miracles Hashem gives to us at every moment, we could understand, inside and out, Rabbi Nachman’s classic teaching:

אֵין שׁוּם יֵאוּשׁ בָּעוֹלָםכְּלָל

There is absolutely no despair in the world.

Editor’s Notes

¹ Statista, Electricity generation worldwide from 1990 to 2025

² Found in Shacharit, Birkot Kriat Shema (Blessings of the Shema)

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David Ben Horin lives in Afula with his family, 60,000 passionate Israelis, and Matilda, our local camel.